Birthday Blues, a message for my mum.

Mum, if you were here now, and healthy you would have hated turning 56, you would have said “I don’t feel it darling, I feel 18” and I would have probably rolled my eyes! But knowing what I know now you would have given anything to turn 56. Since you went I find myself questioning everything, ‘the point of anything’. I try to put on a brave face, to pretend that there can still be goodness in the world. But when I close my eyes all I see is your suffering. I can see your scared childlike eyes within the stillness of your breaking body. It haunts me. My mind is forever playing back memories, mostly ones where I feel I should have spoken or acted differently. When I sleep I dream, I dream of your last hours, or of you alive and with me.. but then I wake and the fresh pain is there, the wound open.

I know I made you a ‘nanny’ too young. I remember you feeling like I had grown up far too quickly. That’s one thing I can wholeheartedly feel glad about, being pregnant at 19. I just wish my children could have had more time. Every time they do something good or bad, I want to tell you, I need to tell you, I need your advise your shoulder, your sympathy! Raising an up and coming teenager is hard! Raising a child in the mists of grief is harder. I honestly feel like I’m losing myself. But I’m a mum and that just cannot happen, I will try my best mum, every day I breathe I will wade through the clouds of fog.

I do wish that grief wasn’t such a lonely path. Nearly everyone has lost someone and yet we suffer in silence. I feel like I’m staring in through a window, not included. Or like I’ve turned up in uniform on wear what you like day. I’m different. I’m not as fun, I’m a shell. Perhaps with time and age I’ll repair, perhaps.

For now remembering you in any way makes me feel like you are still here, right by my side.